twenty-nine ➢ spam

[patheticvillain]

spam } various times 1/24-1/28

[There is a small, slim, and unfamiliar black cat walking the Barge this weekend. A familiar item hangs around his neck: two coins fused together by supernatural strength, hung on a leather thong. With it, the cat seems to pass freely throughout the ship, though he clings to shadows in the hallways.]

[Most often, he can be found in common rooms, curled up on the best chair and watching the goings-on with barely-open yellow eyes. In the gardens, he naps in the flower beds and climbs into the thickest parts of low-growing trees. Here and there he can be found in boxes where he probably isn't supposed to be, seeming to look for small spaces and pressing himself into corners.]

[He also makes his best efforts to trip people, looking incredibly smug with every success.]

spam } vesper

[Don't ask how he got in here. Some things it's better not to question. But he's found Vesper's paperwork, which is suddenly the most fascinating and important thing in the world.]

[Whenever she comes back, he's rolling on his back in the middle of a mess of papers. Which are his now.]

Comments

[patheticvillain]

[He purrs, instinctively, and doesn't wonder about the way Lila kept doing cat things anymore. It all makes sense. This shape is deceptively complex, surprisingly sticky. It doesn't want to let him go.]

[I can, too. I decided I was someone else.]

[Not the cat, he means; someone new. Some other Cassel, with less collateral damage.]

[enchangement]

[ The purring makes River smile. No wonder people love cats so much. ]

Was it easy? To remake yourself in your own perfect image?

[patheticvillain]

[Perfect? He cocks his head curiously at her. I'm not. And it wasn't. It hurt. Physically, mentally. Other people, too.]

[enchangement]

But you're improved. Or you aren't what you used to be, either way.

Even perfection is impossible but what do we call the higher standard of who we want to be?

[ His answer is unsettling in it's truth. River looks away. ]

What if there's no choice but to change?

[patheticvillain]

[I'm less likely to strike out at any moment. Still volatile. Still Sharpe.]

[He keeps eye contact with her for as long as he can, then stares at her in that curious, unsettling feline way when she breaks their stare.]

[You have choices. I had choices. I had a hundred. You don't have to take the choice. You don't have to change the way other people want you to change.]

[Being happy is nice, though. Or - at least content.]

[enchangement]

She doesn't know how to change any other way. She doesn't know what she wants. Sometimes it's to be one whole thing. Sometimes it's to be anything at all but what she is. But imagining what it would be like, to be something else, or someone else, even just a little different...

That's difficult.

There are so many choices, they are infinite, and back home they were finite. There are too many. She doesn't know which direction to go in.

[ Being content sounds very nice, she just isn't sure how she'd ever manage it. ]

[patheticvillain]

[He understands. He really does. The number of times well-meaning people told him he could be better, brighter, more than a tool and more than a killer and he brushed them off because it was simply unfathomable - he can't count them. Being told and believing are so different as to be on different planes of existence.]

[He shifts uneasily on the branch, then cocks his head.]

[Can I show you something? It won't hurt, but it might, I don't know. Make you sad.]

[enchangement]

[ River gives him a little smile that doesn't reach her eyes. ]

Sadness is easier than joy. Sadness is promised as long as you feel something.

Joy is not.

[ Whatever it is, she wants to see it. ]

[patheticvillain]

[She looks so sad already. He wonders if he could even make a dent in what she's already seen. He doesn't really think so. Still, there's nothing wrong with honesty. Right?]

[Taking another few steps forward on the branch, he swishes his tail back and forth.]

[I used to think that what happened in my life was inevitable - that I was destined to pain, and that I deserved it. I wanted it, too. It felt right. It still does - which he does not project, but which he's sure she can tell anyway, and which he's oddly not ashamed about now.]

[But then someone told me it wasn't inevitable and I didn't deserve it, and I think that was when I decided - started deciding - I could make choices on my own that weren't about what kind of pain would come next, or how to be useful, or how to survive from day to day.]

[He closes his eyes, swaying slightly on the branch, and thinks about Chris, yelling and angry and desperate: Who. The fuck. Cares if you're useful. If. You are in pain. I'll say it again. I do not. Fucking want you. In pain. I do not care. If this makes you. The most useless motherfucker on the ship. -- and his own stillness on the other end of the line, his shock, the novelty of this concept.]

[That he could be something apart from other people. That his pain is unnecessary. That his happiness makes other people happy.]

[He opens his eyes and looks at her again, his eyes narrowed in calm.]

[That's when the choices got - narrower. More finite. Still hard, almost impossible sometimes. But never quite too much.]

[It felt like my heart was exploding into stars. That's how you know. That's how you know things are changing.]

[He hesitates again. Then:]

[It's beautiful.]